Standing in a makeshift warm-up area in a Damascus car park before dawn, the group limbered up to pop music blasting from speakers. After sunrise, we crossed the start line and sped towards Umayyad Square, the gathering point for so many celebrations of the Assad family’s relatively recent fall. For a few hours on that Friday morning in September, it was part of marathon route in a changed Syria.
If you had told me a year ago that I would be running 42.2km in the Syrian capital, I would have laughed and cried. Bashar Al Assad’s regime only let tourists into the country on strictly controlled tours, and being a journalist made securing a visa to the country all the harder. His security forces carved the city’s streets apart with road blocks and checkpoints, making the idea of going for a jog a grim prospect in any case.
But earlier this year, amid a group of beaming, enthusiastic Syrian runners, I did complete a Damascus marathon. It was an example of how much Syria has changed in the past year.
I have run more than a dozen marathons and half marathons throughout the Middle East, Turkey and Iran. Plus training, my back of the envelope calculation is that I’ve run over 2,000km in cities from Erbil to Istanbul to Beirut. Each running event has been a window into the contemporary political moment, each city's streets a reflection of its residents’ current woes and joys.
In the case of Syria, it started like this. I had seen an advert for the marathon online, organised by some keen Syrian runners with the blessing of the Sports & Youth Ministry. I booked and paid via an app set up for events bookings across the country. Comedy nights were also among the somewhat sparse listings.
At the end of September, my partner and I boarded a flight from Istanbul and a couple of hours later we were in Damascus, ready for the 42km run the next day. To celebrate his first time in Damascus (he is half-Turkish and had not visited before), I took him out for a drink. We wandered the city as tourists, enjoying it as foreigners and Syrians alike should always have been able to. I collected my race bib number, which came with a T-shirt bearing the slogan: “The road to peace”.
The route was guarded by gun-toting members of the new security forces, who occasionally steered me in the right direction and pointed out the Ministry of Defense building, parts of which stood in tatters after recent Israeli air strikes. It was probably the most surreal scene I have passed on any run, ever, and a marker of one of the fissures of instability still cracking the country's contours.
There were other landmarks along the way that still felt like they hung in a dreamlike space. After so many years, I could not believe I was passing by Umayyad Mosque, the jasmine-scented alleyways of the Old City, and the smart straight avenues of north-western Damascus. It felt like this run was one facet of how the city was being reborn to serve its residents, not the interests of the Assad family whose brutal 50-year rule stole urban centres from Syrians.
Despite everything that is still so wrong in the country, after so many years of restrictions on gatherings and state control under the Assad regime, Syrians were finally able to organise and enjoy leisure events for themselves. There were hiccups, of course – route signage trickled out by the end of the race; there wasn’t enough water. But it kind of didn’t matter. This was Syrians organising for Syrians. Volunteers lined the route, their smiles swelling my heart.
Elsewhere too, I have better understood other countries through running in them. In Palestine, I ran a half-marathon through Bethlehem in the shadow of Israel’s grim separation wall, which blocks Palestinians’ movements and is a constant reminder of the illegal occupation of the West Bank.
In Iran, the Kish Island half marathon started with women cordoned off together behind the male participants, to clear looks of anger and frustration on the female runners' part. It was years before the major Women, Life, Freedom protests in 2022, but a reminder that the injustices faced by Iranian women on a daily basis long predated that movement.
There have also been runs shrouded in trauma. Some years ago I ran a 10km event through Beirut’s port. What a unique route, I thought at the time, as I jogged past enormous warehouses and devices that hauled containers off huge tanker ships. Only when the port exploded a few years later in 2020, after negligent storage of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, did I realise how close we had been to danger.
In the wake of that horrific explosion, I couldn’t face running for weeks, even on my favoured route along the seafront corniche, my supposed place of reflection and calm. It felt wrong to do something so unnecessary when half of Beirut had been damaged and destroyed. Weeks later, I managed to put my trainers back on. The glass that still littered the pavements from thousands of broken windows crunched under the rubber soles of my trainers.
But current affairs aside, I have learnt other, perhaps more important, things from pounding the streets. Full marathons are normally accompanied by shorter runs that attract thousands of families, who crowd streets and squares to enjoy the inevitable pre and post-run snack stalls, musical performances and goods on offer at sponsors’ stands. Groups of colleagues and friends often run in teams. Running club contingents are often scarily fast and easily overtake me.
People are out living very normal lives – or at least aiming to. They’ve come out on a weekend morning to do something just for fun. Sometimes they are raising money for charity. They can take up space in their city's streets, take pictures, and enjoy what it means to have leisure time.
In Lebanon, I once ran through the vineyards of Bekaa Valley, passing through thickets and along farmers’ trails. This was just Lebanon being beautiful Lebanon – nothing more and nothing less. In Palestine, despite the reminders of Israel’s infrastructure of occupation, there was a lively dabke performance at the post-race ceremony – because what would a properly Palestinian marathon be without the traditional dance? In Turkey, there are always about six different languages to be heard at the start line – Turkish, English, always some Russian, and often Farsi, Ukrainian and German. It is absolutely a cliche, but it’s an indicator of Turkey’s position as a place of all peoples.
Marathon events are, for me, a much-needed reminder that not necessarily everyone spends their days living and breathing current events, politics and their ramifications. They are not constantly dealing with the worst of humanity, which as journalists is often our task. They seek normal lives that involve looking after their loved ones, earning enough money to live decent lives, and doing weekend activities like running and having fun (I realise those two don't go together for everyone). They are enjoying themselves, as is their right.
In a region surrounded by so much conflict and pain, the opportunity to move and to smile is a wonderful thing. For me, doing something completely removed from the politics and analysis work of, well, my work, is also a wonderful thing. In running, I find a space that allows me to see the world in a more rounded way.
There are other places I would like to run. High on my list are a Cappadocia trail run in Turkey, taking participants away from the honeypot of one of the country’s most visited tourist destinations and into its remote valleys, lined with peculiar rock formations and filled with space to think.
Tunisia’s Carthage marathon, around its eponymous ancient ruins, was cancelled the year I registered, so I hope to finally complete that one. I shall be hanging on to my Damascus Marathon 2025 T-shirt, and hope I can get the 2026 event’s version to join it.
